collection1b

January 01, 2015

The Waterman’s Plunger Filler

, or pump, or piston filler, another obscure Waterman’s pen.

[Posted on L&P on Jan 17, 2006.] Did Waterman ever produce a plunger filler in the 1930s? Well, Parker had its Vac with its diaphragm filler, so Waterman had to have its Ink-Vue with a diaphragm, even though theirs was lever-driven rather than using a plunger rod. So why didn’t Waterman have a piston, or pump, or plunger filler as well? And if Waterman did have a plunger filler under development in the 1930s, but never put the pen into production, then how do you look for it? How can you look for one, when you don’t know whether one ever existed? And how can you look for a 1930s patent when the word “pen” isn’t used in the title of the patent? Well, the answer is you can’t, unless you stumble upon the patent for it, and then it’s only the patent for one, not an actual pen. US patent no. 1,967,580 is for a pump filler that was assigned to the L. E. Waterman Co. in 1934. The piston rod, or plunger had to be pumped several times to fill the pen. Gabriel Larsen held at least 25 pen patents and designs including this one, all assigned to Waterman, but this one was, as far as I know, another obscure Waterman’s pen that was never produced. David Nishimura also wrote that he had never seen an actual example. Has anyone else ever seen one? I found the patent while looking up patent no. 2,489,976 for another pump- piston filler that cited the Larsen patent in its list of references at the end of the specifications.